Real Gold - Five

In the winter of 2006, a group of friends came together to found Real Gold, in the hope of supporting the people and ideas that they were passionate about.
 
Real Gold's first public appearance was DJing for an Animal Collective after-party below an S&M club, before hosting their first event 'A Large Party' in December 2006 at the Wallis Gallery space in Hackney Wick, featuring Young Turks, Merok Records, producer Martin Cole (RIP), Jack Penate and NTS Radio founder Mr Wonderful.
 
The subsequent years saw a series of club nights (The International Amalgamation of Champions, Rich History & Cough / Cool) and early shows featuring the best new music including Actress, Adele, Bok Bok, Bullion, Dels, Emmy The Great, Florence and the Machine, Fucked Up, Gwilym Gold, The Horrors, How To Dress Well, Jamie XX, Joy Orbison, Laura Marling, Lightspeed Champion, New Look, Sampha and the Shining. Combined with often being the first of our contemporaries to host nights at some of London's more original and infamous venues, Time Out called us "saviours of London nightlife."
 
The shows paved a way for a series of t-shirt releases including a Young Turks collaboration and Warzone homage, the Train Chronicles debut record and music videos for A.R.E Weapons and Enchante. In Christmas 2007 we opened up a temporary store off Carnaby Street with stylists Avigail Claire and Damian Collins' label Silver Spoon Attire. We made a move into print and publishing in 2008 with the launch of cult satirical  magazine FUN, internationally distributed for free, and Real Gold members Ben Freeman and Ben Rayner launching Ditto Press and Rayner Books respectively.
 
In 2010, having already put on nights at its previous incarnation as Dalston's Pier One Nightspot, Real Gold opened its first bar, The Alibi.
 
Real Gold family have exhibited at the Barbican, ICA, the RCA, and in Hoorn, New York, Paris, L.A and Tokyo, as well as hosting openings for the Hannah Barry Gallery's 'Optimism: The Art of Our Time' (2008) and the Bold Tendencies sculpture exhibition (2011).
 
It's been five years since we started.
We're having a party to mark this start.
Please come and join us to celebrate.

Aaliyah - 10 Years Gone

Real Bold 1

Bold Tendencies 5 Launch

Real Gold Photographers' Senate

Edition Two - Lay Low

The Alibi's First Birthday

Real Gold started a weekly club night in the summer of 2007 called Cough/Cool in a neon basement in Dalston named Pier One Nitespot. The venue was great, the special guests were great... but back then nobody wanted to party in that area every Thursday night.

Around the same time we started putting on parties at The Macbeth on Hoxton Street. We promoted some of the venue's very first events and, we're proud to say, helped get the ball rolling at what is now one of London's best venues. The Macbeth's owners, Mark and Mark, became good friends to Real Gold and they (perhaps jokingly) said that one day they'd buy us a venue of our own as a thank you.

In late 2009 we were forwarded an e-mail from someone who had spotted Pier One was for sale. "Looks like it wasn't just your night that didn't work there," they said. We instantly forwarded the listing to Mark and Mark, begging them to trust us that Dalston was the right
location for a free entry late-night bar. They put in an offer. It got accepted. They gave us the keys. Real Gold had its own bar. The Alibi was born.

Building and furnishing started soon after, all handled by our friends. However, with money quickly running out we prematurely opened doors on 3rd March 2010. The DJ table was an old door, there was nowhere to sit, only one toilet and everyone left covered in dust... but we were open. As and when we could afford it, we got ourselves some chairs, more toilets and fixed in a Void Acoustic soundsystem that has continued to play host to an array of amazing and diverse music.

It's a year later. We're still going.

This Thursday 3rd March 2011 please come and celebrate our first birthday with us!

Real Gold Photographers' Senate

Edition One - Britannia's Swollen Eye